A Journey through My Diverse Passions

Recently, I decided I wanted to experiment with oil pastels so I researched the available brands. I was looking for something with acceptable quality without breaking the bank. From my research it seemed that there was no middle ground for oil pastels. There are many brands that are inexpensive but poor in quality and then there are the professional grades, such as Sennelier and Holbein, which are very expensive. I concluded that the Cray-Pas Expressionist oil pastels were the highest quality inexpensive brand for me to experiment.

I have a 12 color set of Cray-Pas Expressionist oil pastels from a drawing class I took last year and figured it would be easiest to just expand my color base. I went to Dick Blick to pick up a 48 color or a handful of assorted colors if they had them individually for sale. Unfortunately, they only carried 12 and 24 color sets. After talking to the sales associate, I came to the same conclusion as before, that Cray-Pas Expressionist would be the best inexpensive set, but Dick Blick didn’t carry the colors I wanted in the store.

After that, I went to Hobby Lobby to see if they carried the Cray-Pas Expressionist oil pastels. They did not, but I found Gallery Artists’ Soft Oil Pastels by Mungyo in a 48 color set. I went home and researched them to see if they would worko the trick. Apparently, Mungyo is known for making student grade Gallery Oil Pastels that are quite unsatisfactory. The Gallery Artists’ Soft Oil Pastels are their new artist quality line and I was able to find a couple of reviews saying they were decent so I decided to try them out for myself.